


Dreams on the road to Eadu

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Cassian is not exactly good at feelings, Dream Sequence, F/M, Longing, Missing Makeouts, dreams revealing hidden thoughts, lonely mixed-up people trying to hide from their attraction, nor is Jyn, unadmitted love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-21 00:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9523793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: She knows she is asleep, and that means this is a dream...





	

He hasn’t slept for two days and they’ve sent him straight out again. There'd been no time for rest on the short trip to Jedha, barely even time to think why they were there. Everything gone to hellfire and dust, and flight with the winds of death under their wings. They're on their onward way again. Now, hearing Draven’s cold voice on the Comm repeating his orders again, he’s suddenly so angry he wants to break things and yell. Is an extraction really so impossible? Hell, they have the man’s own daughter with them to persuade him! A scientist of Erso’s stature could be a huge asset. It’s wrong, just plain wrong.

He says nothing. General Draven has never taken well to staff with opinions of their own, nor to disobedience. 

He returns to the flight deck, settles himself in the co-pilot seat next to K-2. K doesn’t waste time; he asks, once, what is wrong, and gives a single barely inflected “Ah” in response when Cassian tells him curtly “Nothing.”

Nothing is even out of the ordinary; this is all of it miserably, bitterly normal. Orders he doesn’t believe in, given for the greater good he does. The burden of carrying out the deeds others command, and of living after with another pair of dead eyes forever on his conscience.

The droid’s movements are quick and economical beside him. K doesn’t need help. Cassian closes his eyes against the rippling light of hyperspace. He’d like to be able to shut out the memories as easily; of blood splashed on his hands, so many times, of last breaths exhaled in shock, bodies gone to dead weight in his arms.

But he can’t rest, much less get the sleep he needs. There’s a draught on his face and he opens his eyes again to see the windshield has been broken and the dusty hot storm of Jedha is pouring in. And with it, Jyn Erso. That wretched, blasted woman! She grips the frame and swings herself up to climb in casually, as though shinning up the hull of a U-wing in motion and cracking a sheet of duraglass were things she does every day. She’s sliding down the control panel, practically landing in his lap. Her eyes are very bright.

He pushes her away with a curse. “What the hells are you doing? You’re not allowed in here!”

She sticks out her bottom lip at him and glares. And begins to argue.

She starts in a low voice, gets progressively louder and angrier the more he tries to stop her. She demolishes his every defence, tears through his convictions and his cynicism both, smashes every shield he’s ever held up over his compromised heart. How dare he call himself a man of honour, how dare he say he has ethics, holds to a cause worth fighting for? He’s killed so many times his whole life is just a trail of blood. She tells him furiously, his talk of something greater than himself is just another mask of cowardice; it’s a refuge behind which to stow the knowledge that he, Cassian Andor, would never have stepped into gunfire to save a child, or cried at his father’s voice heard again after so much time. He’s a hollow man, all his beliefs are dead and he’s gone cold inside; no amount of preaching the fire of freedom will warm him now.

K-2 ignores her. K must be getting hardened to her already.

Every time he tries to speak she shouts over him, and goes on shouting. It’s unbearable. She knows every precise moment of pain and shame in his life, and she lances him through with her words. The hot Jedhan wind blows into the ship and he cannot breathe, it snatches the very air from his lungs. Jyn’s hair has come loose and is blowing round her face; her eyes burn into him, sea-green fire and fury. He wants to slap her; for this unprovoked attack, for being right, for knowing him so viciously accurately; wants too to cry with relief and thank her, because she is ripping off every stone he ever laid on his heart, she’s tearing all the bandages off all the wounds he’s had to hide, making every scar bleed as if new-cut. And underneath it all, under all that pain and hiding away, now, he sees once again the truth.

He still believes. He’s near killed himself with guilt, but he does still know; the cause itself is right, and it is larger by far than his individual crimes, and undiminished by them. He’ll hold true to it. Even till death. No matter what.

Jyn, furious and alive, has tears in her eyes.

He stands up, pushes back his seat, and laying his hands either side of her face he pulls her close and shuts her mouth with a kiss.

She goes completely still for a moment, her parted lips caught by his, her words silenced. He leans into the kiss and her body is pressed between his and the control panel, all hard muscles and soft warmth. Her heart pounds on his.

Then she hits him in the ribs.

It’s a good hard punch and he pulls back with a grunt of pain. “Ow!”

“You deserve it,” says Jyn, ocean-eyed and belligerent, and smiling. Oh krif, smiling at him; he’d never thought to see her smile. She’s beautiful. No hiding from it now.

“I do,” he agrees breathlessly. “Yes, I do deserve it, you’re right. You should hit me again, I deserve it all.”

There are tears still on her cheeks and he’d like to kiss them away; but he’s already out of line, and whatever he deserves, she doesn’t deserve to be assaulted by him. He steps back. But she moves forward, determinedly, and their bodies are still pressed together. She’s still smiling, through the tears. She says “No, Cassian. Not now you see it. You don’t deserve it anymore, now that you’ve heard me.”

He’s frowning, trying to comprehend her, and she reaches for him with hands that will not be gainsaid for all their gentleness; she draws him down and kisses him back, hot-mouthed and eager. He closes his eyes in shock for a second. Responds greedily, to her touch, her devouring heat. When at last their lips part he’s breathless. He gasps her name; opens his eyes and sees hers are alight and alive, her expression nakedly vulnerable as she smiles up at him.

K-2 beside him says amusedly “Did you realise you’re talking in your sleep, Cassian?”

“Uh?”

The windshield is intact, no sign of the dust storm of destruction flying at them; the featureless speed-blue of the hyperspace lane safely held outside the hull. There’s no-one else on the flight deck but the droid. “Huh – what?” he says blearily.

“Talking AND panting.” K’s voice is pointed. “I think you had a bad dream.”

“Sorry.” Cassian rubs his face, tries to shake the sleep, and the dream, away.

“If you need to sleep you should go to the lower deck and leave me to pilot the ship. You know perfectly well that I do not require a co-pilot, and your huffing and moaning is very distracting.”

He’d like to be able to give back salt for salt and sass for sass, as usual, but his head is ringing with exhaustion. He looks at the controls in front of him and has to acknowledge that his reaction times would be too impaired to be any use. “You’re right,” he admits.

K turns to look at him; comments “You don’t say that very often.”

“Well, you’re not often right.”

“I am right approximately 87% of the time in my assessment of your need for sleep.”

“That’s only because I need sleep 87% of the time…”

He stands, stretches his aching limbs and stiff neck. 

“If you’re going below,” K-2 says “You should check on Jyn.”

“Huh? What – why?" Blast it, did he actually say her name? Could this get any worse? – K will never let it go if he was moaning her name…

“She is also making a lot of noise,” K-2 says. “At least to my hearing.” There is total silence from below decks. Cassian glares at him. “I think she is also having bad dreams,” the droid goes on, unabashed. “And with more reason than you.”

He’s already on the gangway down. “I think you’re beginning to like her.” He hopes that will be a parting shot, but as he descends he hears K say above him “No.”

“You had to think about it,” he retorts.

“No, I did not.”

“You’re hopeless.” He reaches the bottom rung, pretty sure there will be another considered “No” from above; but now he’s in the hold he can indeed hear faint sounds, and in a second’s glance he locates Jyn, curled against the hull. She’s whimpering in her sleep.

She sounds desperate, trapped. It’s too much, coming just moments after seeing all the light of the universe in her face, and tasting all its eternal life on her lips. Dream lips. He can’t turn away.

He hurries to her side and kneels down. Reaches out, hesitant, and touches her shoulder gently.

She’ll have far worse nightmares when she learns what his real mission is. She’ll probably never let him speak to her again, much less touch her.

She’s renewed his faith, and he’s going to murder her father. This is not a person he can afford to care about; but his heart almost stops as she opens those clear sea-blue eyes and looks up at him. How could this have happened? It’s insane; but it gives him life, when he’d begun to think there was none left in him.

So much grief, and so much hope, in those eyes. And his mission is to kill that hope.

**

She knows she is asleep, and that means this is a dream, so if she could only remember the key she could free herself with a thought. But though she commands it in her mind with urgency and all the anger in her, her bonds remain. She’s pinioned hand and foot; arms lashed above her head, ankles tied; her mouth is gagged with something wet, dirty-tasting; her clothes are in rags. She struggles again, casting her eyes around, desperate for some way of escape.

She doesn’t recognise the place. It’s a clearing among trees, more trees than she can remember ever seeing in one place; a place from stories, she thinks; woodland, forest. She sees thick understorey growth and dark conifers towering into a hazy sky. The air is mild, and smells fresh. Birds call in the tree canopy, tiny voices thin and bright as toy bells chiming; unseen insects drone in the grass around her. It’s a peaceful place. If she were only free, it would feel safe, even comfortable. 

Jyn is not used to being safe or comfortable. She remembers other dreams of being bound like this, when people came and stood round her, staring, tearing her apart with their eyes and never making a move to help. She has been weak in her dreams and forced to hide from it, in front of strangers, too many times. 

She squirms, chewing on the gag, furious and disgusted at her helplessness. This is a dream, the ropes ought to vanish, they should be under her control. But she commands them to go again and yet again, and nothing happens. She rages, grunting into the wet rag in frustration, yelling in her mind. Screws up her eyes and strains every muscle, ordering the ropes to loosen and fall away into the dark. Opens her eyes again to see the same mild autumnal woodland, and the darting birds overhead. Helpless, still. She tries to scream, to wake herself, but cannot get a sound out. 

There’s a crackling, somewhere in the woods to her left; the snap of a twig breaking, crunch of trodden leaves. Something – or someone – is coming towards her through the trees. Jyn writhes, struggling in real desperation now. But no amount of twisting and pulling has any effect; she’s pinned to the forest floor, a helpless captive to be preyed upon by whatever comes. The sounds of movement are nearer and she turns her head, searching, trying to identify the danger; soldiers, Stormtroopers, carnivores, she can’t say which she fears the most. Her helplessness is more terrifying in itself than any predator.

The sun breaks through the trees, slanting, silhouetting a single figure that moves towards her with rapid, silent grace. She draws her bound legs up to kick with both feet, meaning to fight for the few seconds she may be able to. She’s screaming in earnest now, but the gag stifles every scrap of sound. The figure reaches her and drops down beside her, reaching out, and a stunned groan of disbelief comes from her throat as she recognises the man. It’s Cassian Andor.

He bends over her, his eyes searching hers, scanning her bound, half-stripped body dispassionately. She tries to speak, to tell him to untie her, ungag her; no words come, only a soft moan, a stifled, fragile sound.

His face is haunted, lips parting as he breathes hard. He stares down at her, unspeaking, and his outstretched hand comes to rest on her bare shoulder.

His touch burns like a spark on her flesh. She moans again, every muscle relaxing helplessly as he slowly brushes his fingertips over her skin; to the front of her neck, down to her breastbone, across the rise of one breast.

She wants to escape; and never to. She’s lying in the grass, waiting to be eaten alive, and she wants him to cut her loose, and she wants him never to stop touching her. She’s trapped and helpless, she has no choice but to be here; she wants never to be anywhere else. 

His eyes are hypnotic, full of life and unknown light. His keen hard face is wide open in shock as he looks down at her. He doesn’t speak. Just touches her, with fingertips hot as the sun.

Jyn writhes and arches her back, pushing herself upward, towards him, commanding him in her mind, free me, touch me; and at last, his hands move, to her throat, her face, her mouth. He tugs the gag away and she breathes and pants, and gasps to him to untie her. His touch glides along her bare arms and the ropes lashing her wrists are gone. She reaches for him. Her eyes are sliding closed, overwhelmed by the potent heat caressing her and the deep sunshine of his gaze. She wants those slim thighs to slip between hers, wants this lean, hard body to cover hers; wants to feel those fine lips devouring her, the rough silk of his beard on her skin. She wraps both arms round him and moans on each exhalation as Cassian touches her and touches her, and does not stop.

Suddenly his voice speaks in her ear, low and urgent. “Jyn! Jyn, are you okay?”

Her eyes fly open.

She’s curled up where she had lain down, on the lower deck of the U-wing. She’s breathing fast as the rest of the dream dissipates. 

Cassian is crouching over her, one hand just brushing her – fully-clothed – shoulder. He draws back as soon as he sees she’s awake. His lips are parted in concern.

“I had a – a dream,” Jyn whispers. She doesn’t know how to say anything more. Sweet life! 

Cassian sits back on his heels and the oblique light coming down from the flight deck illuminates his eyes. Deep brown topazes, a clear flame struck and burning within.

“You were gasping in your sleep,” he says softly. 

“I’m sorry.” Her voice has gone taut with embarrassment and she realises with horror just how ill-tempered she sounds.

Please, let him touch her again…

“You didn’t wake anyone. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine,” Jyn says. Her skin all gone to goose-bumps with need. He’ll never touch her again, and she wants him to, and she has to hide from that want.

She watches him silently as he searches her face for something and doesn’t find it, as he turns away and climbs back to join K-2 on the flight deck.

That dream; quite the revelation. She wants to mock at herself for it. How had she managed to convince herself she would never notice that lean, muscular body, those long slim legs? 

Those eyes. Dark jewels with ghosts inside.

That look of concern.

She knows he’ll never touch her again, and it seems the worst thing in the universe to know.

But they have a mission.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr, where I'm imsfire2!


End file.
